We're in Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) territory here, so all aboard for bestiality, misogyny, possessed tennis balls and hideously disfigured monstrosities. Palahniuk's name is as a transgressive writer, and he certainly pushes the boat out here, surreally chronicling an America in apparent Passolini-style meltdown. There's the teenage girl presented with a Porsche for each pregnancy she doesn't abort by her rich, terrified parents; the son driven mad by his father's endless joking; the woman committing suicide on a treatment table with the help of the masseuse; and the boys sent to camp to be shocked out of being gay. They are all here, America's grotesques blown comic-book high. When the stories work, even the really mad ones, they are wonderful. Parables for now.
